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To an Athlete Dying Young / A.E. Housman
"To An Athlete Dying Young" is a poem by English poet A.E. Housman, poem XIX in his 1896 collection, A Shropshire Lad.. XIX The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears. Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s. About The poem can be characterized as a lyric poem or as an elegy. It is perhaps one of the best-known poems pertaining to early death; in this case, that of a young man at the height of his physical prowess. The setting is the funeral of a champion athlete, a young runner. Housman wrote the poem in 1896, perhaps inspired by the death of his close friend Adalbert Jackson in 1892. Published in the period between the two Boer Wars, the poem gained even more popularity during World War I, as many saw it as a poignant lament for the lost generation of so many bright, young men, cut down in their prime. Recognition *Sportscaster Jim McKay recited this poem at the closing of the 1972 Munich Olympics, in honor of the Israeli athletes that were killed during the gamcs in an attempted rescue from terrorists at the Munich airport. In popular culture *The poem is read as a eulogy by Meryl Stree's character, Karen Blixen, in the 1986 Academy Award-winning film,Out of Africa. *The second stanza of the poem was cited near the end of Lois Lowry's novel Messenger, after the death of its main character. *This poem is also read by Mr. Donnelly at a ceremony for the death of a young football player in Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine. *Many of the poem's themes are explored in'' The Invention of Love'', a play by Tom Stoppard in which Housman appears as a double character: a young man smitten with his handsome and athletic university roommate, Moses John Jackson; and an elderly scholar who has just died and is being ferried to the underworld. *In The Simpsons episode "The Last Temptation of Krust", Krusty the Klown opens a press conference with an (uncredited) excerpt from this poem. See also *Other poems by Housman References External links ;Audio / video *"To an Athlete Dying Young" at YouTube ;About *To an Athlete Dying Young at Cummings Study Guides Category:1896 poems Category:Text of poem Category:19th-century poems Category:English poems Category:Poems about death Category:Poetry by A.E. Housman